Not that that changes anything; it's all one gigantic fiction that we keep on watching for some reason, like we expect a drastically different outcome despite knowing damn well what's gonna happen. Old Yeller doesn't live in the end, and judges are human and have opinions.

The old policy prohibited town employees, except police officers, from bringing firearms into town buildings or properties during working hours. The new policy bans weapons on town property unless they're legally permitted. It will allow employees to carry weapons in places where other residents could.

First, the old "policy" exempted cops, of course, but more importantly barred town employees. Policy is not law; thus it was not unlawful for town employees to carry, but getting caught meant potentially getting fired. Citizens however, were not held accountable by this policy as they do not risk losing their job.

The new "policy" is where the meat is. Again, it's policy, not law. As the article describes it, this policy now allows everyone to carry as long as it's legally permitted. To be contentious, there is a big difference between legal and lawful; the latter meaning true law, and the former meaning color of law, or basically fiction.

In my opinion, this new policy under the guise of freedom and 2nd Amendment rights is really a dangerous way of making people think that they have more, when in fact it seems written to control people under color of law. A wolf in sheep's clothing, if you will. What it boils down to is that town employees want to carry without the worry of losing their job, which is understandable to say the least, but the method towards this end is to give up more of their rights - keeping in mind that the employees rights were not threatened before this new policy - in exchange for being "allowed" by the local government to carry.

In short, they're offering the same entity that discriminates against them more control in exchange for not discriminating. It's the same as telling the bully that steals your lunch money that you will clean his room every week if he doesn't steal your money. And I am sure that this is being haled as a gun owner's victory.

On the flip side, there is the typical resistance from the scared senseless folks that can't bear to see anyone armed and capable of protecting themselves, and they offer to the local news man the predictable "guns near kids" sacrifice. Also, do not miss the NRA, Pro-Gun spokesman mouthpiece giving his burnt offering of "this is going too far." Sometimes the Redcoats are dressed in Mossy Oak.

My point is to be careful of what you wish for. Everyone wants to be able to carry where they want; just be sure that you don't give away a right for a promise to be left alone.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

I am going to mass produce ammo like never before. Just the thought of being able to shoot my 1911 lifts my spirits.

.380 ACP is next; the mold should be here today. Now I just need some time.

Something someone mentioned to me the other day though when I said that five gallon buckets of dirt hung from trees make awesome animated targets, he said that that was a "green" way to shoot, as I wouldn't be putting lead into the environment. I guess so! I'm goin greeeeeen man!!

It's also a good way to save lead. Not that I'm that stingy; wheel weights cost very little, and the amount of bullets that can be made from one bucket of them is amazing. However, it sure would be easier to re-melt lead bullets than to melt wheel weights with the metal clips. I'm gonna make this lead last.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Saturday I went out to see how my rifle likes the 168 grain Federal Gold Medal Match. I went back out to the old pond; only this time I took a weed eater to clear the vegetation, as I learned my lesson well from last time. Still, I ran the weed eater out of string and bent my machete in the two hours it took to cut a shooting lane.

I got there right at 1000, and the temperature was already above 90. After clearing a lane and setting up targets, I was soaked with sweat down to my knees. The humidity was at 48%.

A week ago I bought a 4 foot plastic folding table to shoot off of. I've eyed them for a long time, but all the folding tables I've come across are too rickety for range work, but not this one. It's good to go. It sure makes things easier than shooting off the hood of the truck, and it was nice to be able to drive down to the targets with A/C instead of walking.

With the table set up, I laid out the rifle and commenced to setting up the chronograph. I also walked down and set up a target at 100 yards to get these rounds zeroed. In that ten minutes time my rifle was almost too hot to touch just from being out in the sun. As for my target, I used a piece of thin cardboard from a pack of orange dots as it was field expedient, and also because I could measure it with the range finding reticle on my scope. I paced the distance off to start with, and between my well calibrated eye and the scope reticle, I'm convinced I was at 100 yards. Some teenage scumbags stole my rangefinder, so I'm learning to use other methods.

As it turns out I couldn't see my shot holes on the little six inch piece of cardboard, so I went back out and put up a piece of drywall that I had brought along to shoot my new 45 ACP handloads at. I got dialed in pretty nice, right after I shot a half inch three shot group just outside of the top right dot.

I wasn't there though to shoot groups at 100; I was there to dial the rounds in at 285 yards - as close to 300 as I could get on Saturday. My first three rounds I used .7 MILs hold over instead of the 1 MIL that I was supposed to use, which put me just under the bottom black dot. Despite that, they were tight, which made me happy:

I then fired off a five round group at the bottom black dot, which I pulled the first round high and to the left, and marked it so in my book before clicking off the next four rounds. That group made me happy too, discounting the first shot.

At that point, the gun was blistering hot. Normally it takes between ten and twenty rounds to get this gun to warm up a bit before it will shoot tight. It likes to run hot. Saturday was the exception, as there was no hiding from the sun, and I had to wrap the barrel with a wet T-shirt and stuff the whole gun in the case for twenty minutes just to be able to fire off another three round group. I would alternate shooting it and my little AR15 to keep from sitting around - notice the three little shot holes near the top black dot. Apparently the drop compensation chart that came with the Burris Fulfield II scope is off: those rounds were aimed at the bottom dot. Not a bad group though.

The mirage was terrible, and worse with each shot fired and minute passed. I have little to no experience shooting with mirage, and combining that with my sweat soaked face not getting a cheekweld, and you have a recipe for some piss poor shooting.

That would be my last group fired, this time at 256 yards, measuring 2.831". The three shots on the right are from the AR15. At least they're minute-of-groundhog.

As usual, here's some through-the-scope pictures. First, the Horus Hawk:

And the Burris on seven power:

Last but not least, I shot almost twenty rounds of my wheel weight handloads of 45 ACP to see how they did. I intended to shoot a lot of them that day, but I had had enough of the bugs and the heat.

Powered by six grains of Unique, they averaged in at 858 fps, which is dead on as a substitute for ball ammo. I'm happy as can be about that. I was shooting off hand at fifteen yards, not shooting for groups, and they all stayed within the front sight post. Can't do better than that for target fodder.

I am now going to mass produce some more 230 grain LRN ammo so that I can actually shoot my 1911, instead of just dreaming about it. I haven't shot the thing in many months due to ammo not being readily available or affordable. I am also going to stock up on the FGMM as it seems to shoot well in my gun, and JBM Ballistics says it will make it close to 950 yards or so. One day I hope to test it out.

Come to think of it, terrorists have long used kids as weapon delivery vehicles. Why not ban kids in general from flying? Perhaps that's too extreme. Maybe every child should be physically searched, just in case, ya know? It's not like they're going to resist or anything.

As the rest of the wholesale community got back to work Thursday, vendors worried that the escalating crime in the area will soon put them out of business.

“Yesterday, about 10 or 15 customers told us that they’re afraid, even during the day time to walk around this area,” said Shaikh.

“I’m still scared. I couldn’t sleep all night,” said Suleman Hussain, who owns a nearby business. “We’ve been here for only a year and a half, and I don’t know, I don’t want to be here anymore. It’s too scary.”

But but but, there's cops and stuff; many of them with super high tech equipment that will warn them at the precise moment a scumbag ends your life. Look, there's even a big brawny cop standing next to some crime tape, diligently writing important stuff in a little notebook. All is well in hand.

And a harsh notice to all you vile crooks out there that feed on the soft underbelly of society: crime will not be permitted! It simply won't be allowed! "We can't have people out preying on the community like this."

See how easy that was? Chief Lanier is now going to commence "getting them." She's now going to round up the murdering hooligans, or have a stern face-to-face talk with them to find out what reason and cause they have to rob and kill.

Please Citizens, there's no reason to arm yourself for your own safety! The cops will be by with their notebook shortly. Peace be still!

You know, these incompetent goons insist on disarming everyone because nobody but the po-po can be trusted to provide for their own safety, as they may all go berserk and shoot up presidential motorcades with their sub compact Glocks, so I'm thinking that the community may have a claim against the DC police here for failure to make them feel safe.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Tell me the first thing that comes to mind is that the guy has like an SKS or something in his trunk, and the cops and the press are making mountains out of it? Or perhaps a .25 auto and some fireworks? Maybe a couple of shotguns, a Beretta 92F, and a old Marlin .22 to make it an "arsenal?"

Nope. So what did this crazed, lunatic terroristic fellow have in his car to make it "weapons laden?"

Canadian police Thursday arrested the driver of a car laden with five fuel canisters, a chain-saw and a home-made crossbow close to the Toronto center where G20 leaders will meet.

Man, was that car laden! It was like so totally laden, that it could have easily been called Bin laden! Actually, now it can be called BEEN laden!! Get it! Been laden?!?!

I should be a counter terrorist, because my wit and humor would no doubt be helpful on long stakeouts, watching black hearted men surreptitiously planning the next massive bombing while innocently filling their lawn mower with highly explosive elixir of Allah.

Hell, everyone is potentially a terrorist these days, or even practically a terrorist. Who knows how many unregistered gas cans are within the Canadian border. And this guy had a fucking half empty soft drink, and you know what those can be used for. . . . .

Inside the car they found five blue and red fuel canisters, some only partially full, a half-empty soft drink bottle, a bundle of arrows with red and yellow tips, as well as a large chainsaw, the homemade orange steel crossbow and a baseball bat.

Everyone knows that a crazed madman with a baseball bat can take out an entire little league team!

Three medium-sized suitcases were found to be stuffed with batteries, scribbled notebooks, and a copy of "100 ways to Make Money on the Internet."

There was also a tall, oversized wooden paddle, a bottle of cleaning fluid, and a dirty sleeping bag stuffed in the trunk.

Is it me, or does the anonymous reporter that wrote this garbage remind you here of the janitor from Billy Madison, at that scene where he's in Eric's office with a list of all the petty childish things he witnessed Billy doing? "Billy likes to drink soda. Miss Lippy's car. . . is green." Connection, no?

Anyways, the day is now saved, thanks to the daring bravery of 20,000 the most courageous and under worked mall ninjas on the planet. Good save guys.

Allegedly, the terroristic book "100 ways to make money on the internet" is subversive fodder for the violent and easily manipulated mind, written by none other than the ghosts of Attila the Hun, Hitler, and Glen Beck's great great grandfather. The cover is even made of the skin from a thousand slaughtered Jack Russell puppies!!

So just how close did the madman get to the G20? A thousand feet? A hundred feet? Ten feet?

Nope. Less than half a mile.

That's what you call danger close!

Meanwhile, as this nutcase Canadian was getting aggressively interrogated for endangering the lives of countless Canadian babies and interrupting the peaceful utopia of Toronto, what were those 20,000 brave cops doing to maintain the tranquility?

A swath of downtown Toronto has been ringed with steel barricades, schools and businesses have been closed, and one level of the main Union Station has been shut, leaving only local trains able to ferry passengers.

Just so we're clear, guy driving through town with some gas cans, a bottle of mineral spirits, and a sleeping bag = the most dangerous threat in the world; ten battalions of doogooders with body armor, automatic weapons, and tear gas turning downtown Toronto into FOB G20 and arresting people with gas cans = necessary keepers of world peace.

Some more keepers from this shit article:

"We are not up north, or deer hunting so these weapons were a matter of concern."

I would say that the stupidity, reckless endangerment, and needless violence by Canadian law enforcement is a matter of concern too. And is he suggesting that people hunt with gas cans and a chainsaw? Don't think so? Well, how about this gem:

"This is an ongoing investigation," he said, adding the car was "filled with weapons of opportunity."

If this moron had a clue, he would know that every human being that lives in a modern residential structure has access to countless weapons of opportunity that are far more powerful than a chainsaw or crossbow. Why don't you just lock up everybody then?

He said the hazardous materials team would be analyzing the contents of the fluid containers to see what they were, and the arrested man had not yet given any clear explanation of what he was doing.

I gather that the guy can't give a clear explanation because he's bound and gagged, and probably has some big federal goon's arm and eight-cell Mag light up his ass, looking to "anal-yze the contents of his fluids." Get it? Anal-yze?!?!

I'm so funny.

This is what you get when you give Big Brother the keys to protect you from everything.

Actually, don't even waste the minute and a half of your life reading that article. It's rubbish. It's kinda telling though that during a meeting of the world's most powerful bankers, and during the coordination of an army of cops of this size, that we would hear about something like this to justify the whole mess. It seems like nobody really gives a damn about a bunch of rich bankers, so something has to be made up and perpetuated by the press to make the masses of sheep think that the efforts of their taxed labor is going to a good cause.

Use them if you can. A sign of a good manufacturer is if they both include a decent warranty, and if they honor that warranty. It has to be both, or the warranty is crap.

Car manufacturers are the perfect example of what not to do.

They may advertise a good warranty, but they try as hard as possible to not honor it. I've had every type of warranty known to man from car manufacturers, and at the end of the day they are going to screw you, so don't bother. They make their money on repair work, not the car itself. I've had car manufacturers consult with lawyers; take apart pieces of my engine and take pictures of it to send to HQ for an opinion; send experts to the dealership to look at the repair, all in the name of doing whatever it takes to make money.

There are companies that make other products that do whatever it takes to make their customer happy, and thus spend more money on buying more of their products. T.A.D. Gear is a good example of this: remember the jacket that I bitched about this past winter? They sent a pre-paid shipping label to my house so that I could send the jacket back to them. Turnaround time was about a week, and I had the jacket back, good as new. That's good service. I can't wait to buy more of their stuff, comfortable knowing that when I break it, they will stand behind their gear.

I'm going to test the customer service of another company that I have thus far held in high regard: Suunto.

Waaay back at the beginning of 2006, I bought one of their Vector watches for my all expenses paid vacation to beautiful Ramadi, in sunny Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Good times. Good times.

Since then I have replaced a couple of batteries, and one wrist strap. This is one tough watch, and I love it dearly, but yesterday the pin hole for the wrist strap broke, which leaves me checking my wrist for the time. I feel like I lost my hand.

It's out of warranty, and I don't have the fundage at the moment to buy a new watch, so I've been kinda bummed. Checking out the comments on the Suunto website, the company responded to a customer who had some negative things to say about a broken watch out of warranty; they said that for a nominal fee, the watch could be sent in for a facelift where they replace the housing and band and basically give you a new watch. That's fantastic service right there! Other commenters speak highly of this non warranty warranty, so I gave Suunto a call and they confirmed it.

Using their handy dandy website, I got a FedEx label printed up, the watch boxed up, and the whole shootin' match in the mail. The friendly lady on the phone also informed me that there was no wait time at the moment, so my watch should be back in a jiffy. I'm happy cos' it saves me several hundred dollars to replace an expensive watch.

Here is a pic of my watch shortly after I got it:

Notice the temperature reading on it says 122 degrees F.

Here is a picture of it before going into the FedEx package:

It's pretty beat up. This watch has been through hell for sure, and it's lasted this long. A facelift will be nice. I'll give an update with details when I find out how much it's gonna cost, and what they're going to do.

Personally, I wouldn't let my kid stay out after midnight anyways, but it sure as hell wouldn't be because of some silly statute. I have to wonder though if anyone actually believes the gun toting gang bangers will follow the letter of the law.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

I love the fact that the victim decided not to "give him what he wants" and provide police a sketch later, but instead pounded the creature's face in and ended the attack. If only they all ended that way.

These people no doubt just want the violence to stop, so I don't cast any stones at their end result, only the means.

At the first link, notice how all three of the men who carried out the shooting had extensive criminal histories. This happens again and again and again all throughout America: some scumbags that have made a career out of hurting people decide to elevate their crimes to murder, and the first thing the community and bureaucrats do is try to make things safer by taking away weapons from everybody, instead of focusing on the real problem of keeping these scumbags locked up in the first place. Or, sometimes when the bureaucrats go at it alone, without the help of grieving families, you end up with efforts to ban Go-Go joints, or pizza shops, or dead end streets, or high school football; anything but an attempt to strike the root of the issue.

The opportunity to prevent violence like this drive-by in question occurred years ago, but sadly was lost by the same people who are now trying to stop it by trampling the rights of everyone else. Again, I don't question the heart of these families, or the politicians who are listening to them, but I have to say that if they are not looking at fixing the revolving door policy of DCs criminal justice system, than they are only helping the next murderous teenager in carrying out his crime.

It's not the guns; it's the criminals. When the criminals show a pattern of violence, then put them away for good and you will have your remedy. Why aren't the outraged families screaming about the violent criminal history of the three scumbags? There will never be any shortage of weapons for criminals, but there can definitely be a shortage of scumbags if they are kept in a cage.

Feel good legislation will only take an opportunity away from the good citizens, and aid the DC scumbag in achieving their crimes.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

I got stitches!! I should have listened to my wife, who told me not to do any work today. Instead, I had to defy her orders and work outside under the deck for awhile; at one point I thought that maybe some Vicotin and a smashing headache would enhance my afternoon, so I jumped up and banged the top of my noggin on the edge of a beam.

I knew it was bad when I took my hand off my head and it was dripping with blood and pieces of meat. Head wounds apparently bleed profusely. All I could smell was blood.

After I got some stitches, I noticed how dry the weather was, so I broke out my casting equipment for an innaugural day of making bullets. Freakin awesome!

The learning curve was rather quick, and I noticed that it takes a very long time to get a 5 lb. pot heated up and broken in. With that out of the way, I was kicking out 230 grain round nose bullets like a champion. Discounting the 30 or 40 bullets that I screwed up, I ended up with 205 serviceable rounds that I can load, and eight 1 lb. ingots for another day. I didn't even put a dent in the bucket of wheel weights that I have, and it is one of four.

I still have to prep my brass and size these bullets before I can get to loading them. About two hours including cleanup is what I had for the day, and that's huge in my world.

I'm pretty thrilled.

I'll let you know how they shoot when I get them loaded and to the range.

Burying a veteran on top of another veteran shows that there's more to this than "we don't have enough technology." These two incompetent morons deserve some jail time, not taxpayer funded retirement. How exactly is that punishment?

They were "forced" to retire, see?

As for the technology part - how in the world did General George Washington kick so much ass without so much as one lousy laptop? Hannibal bitched about Windows crashing all the time, making the task of personnel tracking a real pain in the ass, but he still managed to give the Romans hell for 17 years. And King Leonidas, I hear that his abacus malfunctioned, and that there were only 298 Spartans at Thermopylae.

Reams of paper and stone seemed to work just fine for the better part of ten thousand years, and two government jackasses can't even account for the dead for less than twenty.

I've been on travel again; this time to Texas. I would like to take this opportunity to say that the people who design the roads in Texas must be so high on crack that they contaminate every one around them with their toxic stupidity.

When navigating a Texas highway where you are not intimately familiar, you can count on the fact that by the time you see the sign that you are looking for in order to find your way about, if the county even bothered to put one up in the first place, it will be either too small to see until you are ten feet from it, or it will be so perplexed with little road maps and such that you won't be able to read it. Also, it will probably be white instead of the traditional green, as Texas loves to distinguish itself from the rest of the union, and just as surely as the sun rises in the East, the damn thing will not reflect the light from your headlights, so as to make it impossible to see in the dark. There is also the matter of the sign being on the opposite side of the road where you need to turn. Every time.

And while I'm on the subject of street signs, I would like to give a shout out to Sea World to perhaps install a few so that people not from the area may actually find this establishment without driving around in the middle of nowhere looking for the place. You would think that this all common sense, but I can assure you that once you get off the highway, the only way you will find Sea World is if you happen upon it by accident. The shark display is fantastic, by the way.

A couple years back, I was traveling so much that I spent a good third of every month on the road somewhere, or in the air. I'll tell ya, I'd rather drive ten hours in a rental car than go through one security checkpoint at an airport. The whole process is designed to be as humiliating as possible, and I can't see at all where it provides any security whatsoever. TSA is too busy feeling up grandmas and soccer moms to catch Al-Qaeda, or their laughing at the ding-dongs that they get to see with their fancy new scanners. I have to be on a list somewhere as I have to go through one of those "random" machines every time I fly.

If you haven't flown in awhile, it doesn't matter one bit if you have the metal detector friendly shoes or belt any more. Your shoes have to come off, period. I decided this time to use one of 5.11's tactical belts with the polymer buckle, thinking that I could spare myself the part of removing my belt, but pretty boy TSA man with his $90 shiny thing on his shoulder though it best to go ahead and make me remove it anyways so he could give me a fondling, even after I went through the peeping tom machine so the voyeurs could get a good look at my junk.

As far as they have gone with this theater security in airports, I consider those checkpoint people to be less than human, to the point where I would sooner feed my sandwich to a fat puppy than a starving TSA agent. And that goes for the customs people too. If you want to get strip searched by those perverts several times, just go through customs in uniform. Seriously, they will strip search you every time. I guess enforcing their will on the low hanging fruit is much easier than risking a law suit for stripping the guy in the dishdash.

Since I generally frequent military bases when I travel, I do not take a pistol with me as it would be pointless. This time though, it would have given me peace to have it with me. San Antonio is a rough place; while wandering around on foot, the natives instantly took note of my presence, and I could feel their eyes sizing me up. In every major city in America, there are rough parts of town; the trick is to identify that they are not the place for you to wander through flashing your camera, and skirt around them. Sometimes I blunder into them by accident, and it's never fun.

The one that sticks out the most is when I was circled by teenagers in a car while out on foot in Saint Louis. Ten more minutes and it would have been dark, and my ass would have ended up a bad smell in a dumpster.

These days, I advise travelers to drive to their destination. Get a rental car if you have to. If I travel anywhere on the East coast, it is so much cheaper and faster to get a rental car and drive across four states instead of burning up a day at airports. I haven't had a straight through flight in years, and by the time you get done fiddling with shuttle buses and luggage carousels, you will have burned up most of the day anyways. If you drive though, you miss out on all that "special attention" that TSA loves to give you.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

I'm done handloading for the LR-308 for now. My last batch of handloads were too hot when the temperature got in the 80's, so I made a new batch for an OCW test that were loaded with 42.8 - 43.2 grains of Varget with a 175 grain Nosler CC bullet. I had those rounds loaded for two months, and I finally got the chance to shoot them, and it turned out to be a cluster fuck.

I should have known better.

It always starts raining the very moment I start shooting. Every time. This has been a phenomenon that has plagued me for years, and yesterday was no exception. I decided that I would spite mother nature and shoot anyways, to hell with her, but the lightning got pretty serious. I sat in my truck in the middle of the woods, stuck like shit because of the aforementioned lack of traction that was a direct result on Nissan engineering incompetence.

The wife watched the kids for a few hours to buy me the time to shoot, and I spent an hour waiting on the rain, forty five minutes digging out my XTerra, and fifteen minutes setting up to shoot my rounds.

The shoot was a disaster.

First, the humidity was so high that the moisture in the air made seeing the target an absolute challenge.

After I fired three rounds from each of the loads, I realized that I was about out of time, so I picked up the pace. The sun came back out and made it so that I could just barely make out the one inch black diamonds, to the point where I was guessing where they were. It was the most challenging light I have ever had to shoot in. I should have just quit.

The range was 121 yards, and my velocities were averaging between 2,400 fps on the low end to 2,490ish on the top end. Too low for what I'm looking at.

So, I have placed an order for some 168 grain Federal Gold Medal Match, as I have decided that since it is a rare occasion that I can go out and actually shoot, I had better spend it shooting and not fiddling around with handloads. One day when my kids are in school, and I have a little more time, I'll be able to find the right load for that gun.

I'm pretty bitter about this, but it's the right thing to do. I can't figure out when life became so busy that one does not have the time to enjoy life. Something has to change.

The latest thing that has my blood boiling is my YORK gas furnace. It seems the engineers at YORK haven't the slightest frickin' clue as to the magical force known as gravity.

Way back in the mid 90's when my house was built, YORK engineers were too busy playing D&D and smoking pencil shavings to actually pick up the part about gravity in school. Apparently on their first job, they decided to put the condensation drain outlet on the furnaces they were designing four feet off the ground, so that when the outlet jams up with crud it leaks all over the fucking furnace and gets all over the floor. Also, the outlet is positioned so that the PVC pipe that you stick on to it to allow it to drain can't be tilted downward to give that gravity a chance to work.

Keep in mind that in the mid 90's we had ICBMs that could rain death on hundreds of millions of people, and there were space stations in space. Mankind could build all of that, but can't place a drain on a gas furnace in a spot that lets gravity work. I guess those that can, build space stations, and those that can't build furnaces.

The next thing that engineers have jacked up is the "Limited Slip Differential," known to those who have actually been offroad as the "Un-limited Slip Differential." What it all boils down to is car manufacturers are a bunch of cheap-ass swindlers.

Stop me if you've seen this before: your bad ass four wheel drive truck right off the show room floor, in all its 35" tire glory, with all its skid plates and Z20-something "off road" shocks bought as part of that "SVT/NISMO/SR5/Goat Hoof Ninja Traction "racing package," gets hung the fuck up in a wet grassy field with a 5 degree pitch because the "Limited Slip Differential" lets the right rear tire spin at will, while the left rear tire is. . . . .limited?

Seen it before, haven't you? There is an amazing piece of technology that is finally, Finally being incorporated in brand new cars so that you don't have to buy one yourself and pay thousands to have someone install for you. This technology is called a "Locker" and it lets the driver lock the differential at will so that both wheels spin with equal traction. One cannot spin more than another, because they are locked together. They don't work so well on the street where you have to take corners and all, so that is why lockers are activated by the driver when needed.

Every single time I have ever been hung up in the mud, and every single time I have witnessed someone else hung up in the mud, without exception, was because one wheel in the front and one wheel in the back are spinning their little asses off, while the other two wheels do nothing. Limited Slip is for every day driving on the street, and absolutely useless for serious off road. It kills me to see the truck industry pushing these so called "off road" packages with winches, shocks, skid plates, and shiny stickers, and then equipping both axles with FAIL so that the very moment you get into six inches of mud, you essentially have a two wheel drive truck with a glowing light on the dash saying you're in four wheel drive.

My XTerra was not equipped with lockers, although the newer ones have lockers in the rear differential. It's criminal that manufacturers do not equip both axles standard with lockers on newer trucks. And before you bring up cost and how silly it is to add such a simple and cheap device to a truck, let me ask you, do you have "traction control" on your truck? These devices apply brakes to the wheels that are spinning, with the idea that the wheel not spinning will somehow get motivated and actually do something. While traction control may have some worthy application on sports cars and minivans, in my opinion they are a shitty gimmick for off road vehicles, and they are much more expensive.

I mean, that's the answer for the ol' "one wheel drive" problem? Install some complicated computer controlled doohickey that slows down the wheel without traction? Why not install something that works from the very start, and stop screwing the consumers with your pathetic junk.

I've got three kids in diapers and I'm gone at work for eleven hours most days, so when I've finally acquired the two hours to go out and do some shooting, I don't have the time to be dicking around with a fucking shovel trying to dig my truck outta the mud because you douchebag engineers at Nissan don't have the common sense to build axles that lock.

Lockers. Live them. Love them. Install them on every automobile so that we may not get stuck when the going gets rough.

Friday, June 11, 2010

The way I see it, the good Lord gave me the gift of life for a reason, and I aim to have it. I owe my kids a father, and my wife a husband; those responsibilities are far too important to leave to a third party.

It seems that there are vast amounts of Americans who do not mind Natural Law; that is to say that they rely on other human beings or technology to save the day, when they should have been there for themselves all along.

Even if they were caught and brought to justice - we're talking hypothetically here - how could they even be tried? Being ninjas and all, how would a judge even be able to see them to issue a sentence?

Whomever installed the security stuff in the school is incompetent. I mean, you've got motion detectors that can't detect people crawling around on the ground (not that they can detect ninjas to begin with), but didn't bother to place a security device of any kind on the hatch that leads to the roof? Did that slip your mind?

I do point out that this is the second example in recent history where an innocent was injured with one of these Assault Utility Vehicles (there is nothing "Sporting" about them). Their big knobby tires are only designed for one purpose, and that is to shred stuff like mud, sand, baby harp seals, and innocents. And who really neeeeeeds four wheel drive?

Something not quite covered in detail is whether the suspicious "child" acting in a such reckless manner as to distract a very highly trained police officer operating a 5,000 lb Assault Utility Vehicle on a crowded beach was close to the age of consent, and happened to be wearing the minimal amount of clothing as required by law.

These crucial details may help further exonerate the officer from blame, so that Daytona Beach Citizens can go about sunbathing without fear.

I would say that the Escalades brought the several men to the night club, where they were probably there to. . . oh I don't know, seems like such a long shot. . . but I guess they were there to drink, dance, and have a good time. Marvel at my powers of presumption!

I'm totally lost though on what could possibly compel men outside of a DC nightclub to start shooting at one another. Aren't guns illegal to carry in DC? Perhaps nightclubs should post "No Guns" signs at every door to prevent such things in the future, as signs and laws clearly have that effect.

You know, it bothers me these days to see so many articles just like this one. They're all exactly the same, in the same format like the news agency has a frickin SOP for day to day multiple shootings: several people are shot, the venue around the shootings is usually somewhat dubious, no names are released, and then some "official" mouthpiece starts rattling off obvious stuff, like the fact that there are no facts. Nobody has a clue.

I'm sure it's just like this in major cities all across the world, but I think the real difference in DC is that when a guy like Jim Graham gets in front of the camera, one can't help but get a Gothamish type feeling about the whole thing, with those radar-like voodoo glasses and the little bow tie. It seems like something you would read in a DC comic. Appropriate, no?

"The firing squad is archaic, it's violent, and it simply expands on the violence that we already experience from guns as a society," Bishop John C. Wester, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, said during an April protest.

There's a lot wrong with that statement.

First, can it really be considered archaic if it's still in use? That it's violent is about the most stupid thing I've heard in a long time; exactly how do you expect someone to be put to death non-violently? Sprinkle poisoned fairy dust in their last meal? Death by pillow squad?

People are always bitching about how violent, barbaric, unfair, unethical, immoral, inhumane, or disgusting state sanctioned executions are, and they may be right, but every type of execution arguably meets all of that criteria, so what's the controversy? It's like protesting that water is wet. So a firing squad is too violent, and lethal injection may hurt too much, so what's the answer? Hanging? Guillotine? Ol' Sparky is probably the most violent way to go, yet people still ask for it from time to time. This scumbag asked for the firing squad over lethal injection, so what does that say?

Lastly, how does execution by firing squad expand on violence in society committed with guns? Does lethal injection expand on violent poisoning? Does the use of the electric chair cause scumbags to run out and electrocute somebody? Pretty silly.

Of interest to me is that one of the five rifles is alleged to be loaded with a blank round of ammunition, under the idea that none of the executioners will know for sure if the fatal round came from their rifle. This is really stupid in my opinion, mainly because if you can't tell the difference between a real shot fired and a blank round fired, then you have no business shooting at someone who is owed a clean death. If you have never fired a blank round of ammo, there is virtually no perceived recoil, and the report from the rifle is noticeably different, although it's likely that an executioner firing amongst others won't be able to hear his rifle anyways. Considering that these executioners should be experienced marksman, and are probably mandated to familiarize themselves with the rifles to be used by firing them on a range with live ammunition, they should definitely be able to tell from the recoil of the rifle if they are one of the unfortunate souls who fired a live round into the heart of a fellow human being. There's just no way.

On a lesser point, if executing condemned human beings is in your job description, and you volunteered for that job under your own power, why exactly does anyone think you're owed the opportunity to have a cloud of doubt cast on your duty? It just seems kinda pointless.

The thing that gets to me the most in all of this though is that there seems to be no question of his guilt. Nobody is arguing that he shouldn't be shot to death because he's not guilty; the argument is that it's wrong to shoot someone to death because it's too brutal, which brings us back to the whole death by pillow fight thing. Gardner shot his victim to death without consideration of the cruelty of his method, so really this sentence satisfies pretty much every criteria that I can think of in Exodus.

Again, I'm not advocating state executions. That I'm pretty torn on. Ultimately though, there is no real argument that putting someone to death one way is less nasty and cruel than another. We can have a round table discussion on what is the best way, and we can even invoke methods and ideas from the likes of Tom & Jerry or Roadrunner, but at the end of the day there is a heavy job to do. Here we have a man who has chosen his way, and he should have it.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Oh, and by the way, did I mention that the smuggler is Iranian, here illegally, and was caught smuggling weapons fromCanadainto the US? Yup, and to top it all off, the guy was caught from his own incompetence, and not by Jack and Cloe.

Nothing to see here.

Running a business selling "Police Supplies" one has to wonder if these rifles qualify as "patrol rifles." Also, who would be stupid enough to fire a .50 caliber rifle at a tank?

Friday, June 4, 2010

The realist in me sees this both ways. I understand what the author is trying to convey, that the guy is a cop and cops have guns. I can also see the store owner's point of view that some cops have a bad reputation associated with them, or perhaps their department, and he has the right to tell anyone to leave.

Cops are supposed to be the good guys, so it surprises some people to know that some Americans don't like them.

I do have some empathy for the cop, especially considering that he had a good attitude about the whole thing, but I also agree with him that they are failing themselves. Stuff like this doesn't help, and isolated incidents in no name counties like mine sometimes give an us vs. them mentality that doesn't have to be.

None of the responding officers bothered to even knock on the only neighbors door despite having dozens of deputies with rifles staged throughout the property for hours. It's hard to have respect for officers when they won't let you leave the house, won't tell you what's going on, don't care about their rifle barrels dinging your car doors, and are otherwise callous to the very people they claim they're protecting. And go ahead and file a complaint; you'll be pulled over and ticketed 100 yards from your driveway once a week for the next year. The above linked article turns out to be nowhere near the truth of what happened, but hey, the deputies got to handle their new rifles, so it's all good, right?

But back to the article at the top. I found this piece amusing, and wondered if it really applies to everyone:

My daughter and I were so distraught by this negative experience, about the way the café treated the police –when they should be treated with gratitude and respect and honor – that we went the next day looking for a café with class and dignity for all people, no matter what they are wearing.

We found the Palios Dessert & Espresso Bar in Ladd’s Addition, http://www.palio-in-ladds.com/ and we mentioned the situation we encountered, and the man behind the counter, and he said they treat all people equally there.

And what if John Q. Public strolls in with a handgun openly visible on his hip? Would they be treated equally?

Thursday, June 3, 2010

"Four young girls had been watching a bunny in a wooded area near the park as it played in the grass.

Kishpaugh took his dog away, then returned to where the children were still watching the rabbit. The mother of one of the girls told police that Kishpaugh then got a "smirk" on his face as he ordered his dog to "get it."

Something tells me that this guy is going to get these charges dismissed. Sure, he may be a cruel dude to subject four kids to the type of thing that their parents let them watch on Animal Planet, but the reality is that he cannot compel his dog to do anything. The only thing that could potentially stick is the leash law, and even that is pretty flimsy.

The idea that he "siced" his dog on a poor defenseless bunny is a stretch; even more so that he's being charged with animal cruelty for letting his dog do what tens of thousands of years of genetics tell it to do with every fiber in its body.

Anyways, this is another example of a sword being a deadly weapon. I'm not inviting them to be banned, only pointing out that sharpened pieces of metal can still be used as effectively as they were a thousand years ago.

To the unintelligent, this may sound smart, but read the article to discover the reasoning behind it, and thus the reason why this is such a dumb ass law.

"On Jan. 20, an armed man suspected of killing eight people in Virginia was wearing a bulletproof vest when he was apprehended by police. On March 19, a parolee with 19 arrests and four convictions was found wearing body armor after a high-speed chase in Los Angeles."

What Senator Padilla and Gov Schwarzenegger are saying is, a guy who would murdered eight people with a rifle, and a guy with 19 arrests and many violent convictions would now opt out on putting on their body armor before heading out for a night of mayhem, all because of this shiny new law and it's mandated 2 - 3 year sentencing.

Beware all you wannabe killers out there: if you already have a violent felony conviction or three, that ninety year sentence that you scoff at could wind up to be a ninety two year sentence. Best leave your second chance at home.

Next on the legislative agenda is a law to make thinking violent thoughts a felony. You know, why doesn't California pass a law mandating world peace? Seems logical, right?

You can bet that the citizens living in DC will gladly hand over the win.

I've always laughed at fireworks laws like DC's, or even Virginia's, which are equally pathetic, because I find it absurd that governments that can't seem to balance a budget year after year insist that us incompetent commoners can't be trusted with firecrackers.

We can be trusted to hand our children burning hot sticks of molten steel to wave around in the dark and light fountains that shoot ten foot jets of thousand degree flame. Those things are safe. Little firecrackers that can be lit and backed away from, or that launch up into the air to pop from the safety of a hundred feet or so, are way to dangerous so they have to be taken.

It just seems so petty.

I expect the 4th of July this year to be no different than any other year, with Virginians passively defying fireworks statutes and celebrating our independence as they please.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

A U.S. cage fighter ripped out the heart of his training partner while he was still alive after becoming convinced he was possessed by the devil, it was alleged today.

Jarrod Wyatt also cut out Taylor Powell's tongue and ripped off most of his face in a brutal assault that police said looked like a scene from a horror film, officers said.

People who are skilled at fighting should be registered and taxed just like a suppressor, machine gun, or sex offender. Think about it, what would happen if an unregistered cage fighter was loose near a school amongst children? Crazy, huh?

President Obama decided to check out of this Memorial Day at the Cemetery, and instead went home for the weekend. Personally, I think that was the better move for a president that hasn't the slightest clue about the sacrifice our military goes through every day. Vice President Joe Biden was there though, and although he never served in the military, his son is in the Delaware National Guard, so he has some respect for the men and women in uniform. I'll even give him brownie points for not having a silly grin on his face during the wreath laying ceremony like some of the political looking folks in the picture; instead he has a hard grimace as one would expect during such a service.